Week 1 – Academic Lab Culture

I’ve been working in Dr. Helms lab for about 5 weeks which has given me a good chance to experience the culture of our research lab. Dr. Helms’ lab was not the first that I worked for yet the lab culture was different from what I was expecting. The overall culture of Dr. Helms’ research lab was more lax than I was anticipating. Looking at the lab culture we have a couple notable aspects such as: extremely low power distance index, quasi-laissez-faire leadership style, and a focus on the process more so than the outcome.

I discussed these aspects with Dr. Helms, and her idea of leadership within the context of a lab and found these aspects of company culture to be intentional by Dr. Helms. Through talking with Dr. Helms, there seems to be more on a focus on teaching then being results oriented; her philosophy being that results are dependent on teaching, Having more competent members allows for more eyes on the project which would lead to having a better response to troubleshooting and running into problems that many be novel to the lab. This has been experience by myself during my few weeks in Dr. Helms’ lab, with me being the only student in Gottwald who uses the TEM (Transmission Electron Microscope) for diffraction of samples. During interpretation of results Dr. Helms’ would ask what I would think and bring up my experience using the TEM. The quasi-laissez-faire leadership style is intentional with her goal ultimately being the ability to work independently in any lab setting. When I asked what she expected of us by the time we left her lab she stated that we should “work until we know we need to ask a question,” meaning we should learn the balance with troubleshooting independently when dealing with issues of our own experiment until we know that we should ask a question. The low power distance seemed to be caused by her personality, while discussing her potential strengths and weaknesses in the context of our lab she brought up the fact that she does not see herself as assertive and looks at herself as more of a mentor opposed to a leader, and speaks about her role as a mentor more so than a manager or leader.

I think that Dr. Helms got lucky with her grouping of students this summer; it is easy to take advantage of a laissez-faire leadership style. Talking with the other students, we have an understanding that we don’t need to be here for our full hours and can still get away yet throughout our time we have on average stayed longer than what our hours dictate.